My husband finished putting this together last night, and the kids were thrilled!!! It took him 2 full days, plus several hours prior building individual pieces in the garage before he brought them outside. You won't find a better playset for your money! All pieces were in excellent condition when they arrived, and we weren't missing anything either. Also, shipping was super quick and the freight company who delivered brought it right into our garage (4 large boxes). We are looking forward to years and years of fun in skyfort!!!!

I normally don't do extended reviews, but since others' reviews were extremely helpful to me, I thought I would contribute by grading various dimensions of the purchase. This item has been up in our yard for two weeks now. PLAYSET SHOPPING AND DUE DILIGENCE: I will start by talking about my shopping experience. Wife and I looked at about 20 other units from various manufacturers and retailers ranging from Rainbow to Gorilla to others. Leisure Time's Skyfort offered the absolute best bang for the buck. Multiple activities with a cool and unique "crow's nest", giving up to 9 kids the ability to play on it. The reviews on this site were quite positive (and in hindsight, accurate). The product content on Sam's website was great (product descriptions, specs and images). Due to the detailed information, I was able to spot out where in my yard I wanted the Skyfort placed, and mark it with cones to get a look at what the footprint would look like in my yard. Sam's and Leisure Time's customer service is incredible. I was missing parts in the shipment. I called Leisure Time on a Friday and told them I needed the parts Saturday since I had hired help the next day. No questions asked, they shipped them to me overnight. Awesome. Grade: A ASSEMBLY AND ASSOCIATED COST: Finding a contractor to do the work was interesting. Some showed no interest due to complexity. The ones who were interested gave quotes ranging from $600 to $1200. You shouldn't have issues finding someone, but expect a high cost. I add that if you are anything short of `handy', farm out the assembly. It is consuming. It requires a ton of patience. I ended up paying $800. I will share that with the hired help, the setup itself took 2 people 2 full days, plus various parts of 3 additional days with one guy (approximately 50 man hours). Website says 24-36 hours for two moderately skilled people. My experience counters that. Mine was done with two highly skilled assemblers with very good experience putting playsets together, though not the Skyfort specifically. I was involved in about 4-6 hours of the assembly. It is not difficult, but it does require a TON of patience and time. And inventory your parts. It took me 5 hours to inventory stuff (I did that on my own since I wanted the contractor to focus on assembly). I was extremely meticulous about inventory. Grade: C+. RECEIPT OF MATERIALS: I was given a 10 day range within which I could expect to receive the item. I received it on day 2 of that range, exactly 7 days from the date of placing the order. The materials come in 4 large heavy rectangular boxes. The driver showed up at the edge of my driveway and struggled to pull the items out of the truck. My driveway is about 6 car lengths. I had to help significantly with the movement of the boxes from the truck to my garage. The website says `curbside delivery', but the driver was pretty much expecting to put the boxes in my garage. I tipped generously due to the effort. Grade: B. `A' on getting the product to me quickly and the effort to get it in the garage, but a `C' on the way the materials are shipped. Not user friendly. QUALITY: I was extremely concerned with quality. I can say that while the Rainbow sets are clearly superior in terms of quality (they use thicker cedar, longer bolts, etc), this set's wood is no slouch. Though I will say that the wood is `Chinese Cedar'. That is not written on Sam's website. If you go to Leisure Time Products' website, however, it is addressed there in the FAQs. Based on what I have seen one week in, it appears very sturdy. Some of the bolts were stripped, and in fact there were some bolts where we didn't have enough. My contractor found other ways to do the job. Grade: B. PLAYSET IN USE: Bottom line is that the kids love it. A ton of activities. My two year old is able to get everywhere except the crows nest. 5 year old can do everything except the monkey bars. 1 year old loves the swing. Perfect for them to grow into. I noticed a couple of people complaining about how close the swings are. They are close, but it if you have three kids on the swing, they have zero chance of hitting each other. I bought a few "after market" items from playsetparts.com like a steering wheel, periscope, two baby swings, some safety strips, etc. GRADE: A+ Overall, I want to give this 5 stars, but have to give 4 given the grades I gave above. It got dinged on the assembly cost/effort, both of which are substantial. Bottom line is that I would buy this again in a heartbeat. Absolute joy to see the kids on it.

After I received a quote of $2800 to build the playset I wanted from a local Deck company I decided to look elsewhere. I found this one that had everything I wanted and perhaps more importantly that my wife wanted. With some promises from my brother, father, and brother-in-law to help me build it, I thought it was worth a shot. When we opened the box, it was a little overwhelming with all of the screws, bolts, washers, and boards. I think the key is ORGANIZATION. Sorting the boards by the letter was a huge help and laying out the different bags of screws on an open table was equally important. Not all of the pre-drilled holes seemed to line up exactly right, but for the most part I would rate the instructions and precut wood at 8 out of 10. The manual said that it would require two moderately skilled workers 20-24 hours to complete. I found that to be pretty close to a minimum requirement-- as our schedules allowed and my help came and went- it took us 3 weekends to complete- some 4 hour days, some 7-8 hour days. It was a lot of work. After completion, it stands very sturdy. I would rate the overall quality at 9.5/10. If you have the (free) help needed to build this, it would be hard to beat the price. I would give the value of this product a 10 out of 10. Best of all, my two children, 4 years old and 18 months old, LOVE IT. They have played on it every day until there is not a bit of daylight left. Their smiles make all the work a distant memory!

I am going to be totally honest here. I didnt even bother trying to built it. I hired a company who builds these swing sets and they brought 3 guys and it took a whole day. These guys have built this set over 40 times and they said its a popular set and its solid. I will be adding polyurethane before winter and bring back the company once in a while to reinforce it. My kids love it and I have an 8 year old and she is super happy, the entire neighborhood comes in and uses it, even the neighbors who have a swingset use it! its got just about everything you could ask for, but it does take alot of space. If you are not sure which swingset to get and are considering this one, you should know you will get a good one.

Ordered the playset with assembly (and pre-paid Sam's Club in full including assembly) and getting their third party company to show up has been a disaster. I paid Sam's club for an end-to-end service and their install keeps being postponed last minute. Has been over a month now that it has been sitting here. Sam's club takes your money very quickly.

This is an excellent playset, able to entertain as many as ten to twelve children at once! I just hosted a May Day party and the kids loved it. It is very solid and well designed. My only complaints: the swings are mounted a bit too close together and the telescope is very poor (it is poorly made, has no magnification, and breaks easily). A few comments about assembly: I purchased the Skyfort II from Sam's Club online and it was delivered in four 200lb boxes one week later. First step: take inventory of all contents and make sure you have EVERYTHING before you start building (in my case, everything was). As you take inventory, arrange all the parts and hardware, systematically and in a covered area, to make it easy to find the parts you will need for each step. Time for inventory - 6 hours. Following the advice of other posts, I weather-treated each wooden piece with a satin-finish polyurathane (2 gallons, $50 each) to extend the life of the playset. This took about 20 hours to complete, but when my kids are done playing with the Skyfort ten years from now it should still have pretty good resale value. Assembly took about 30 hours by myself. I already had all the right tools and have assembled a lot of furniture in the past, so I ran into very few problems. Follow the directions very closely, doing each page in order, and double-check your parts before completing the build on each page. Make sure you always use the right parts for each step of the assembly!!! If you don't, you will find yourself without the right part when you need it. Tip #1 - Keep all the hardware in the plastic bags they come in. Each bag is clearly marked with part numbers that correlate with the instructions on each page. Tip #2 - Once you have completed Step 4 of the Fort assembly, move the fort frame to its permanent location (which should already be prepped) and make sure that every part of the core frame is straight, level and at right angles before proceeding. Tip #3 - For the porch roof assembly, do steps 1, 3 and 4, and leave step 2 for when you actually install the porch roof later in the build. You'll have a easier time with the installation. Tip #4 - For Do-It-Yourselfers like me: invest in six to eight Irwin Quick-Grips. There are MANY situations when you will want to simply hold two boards together in one or two (or five) other places while you screw or bolt another section. The Quick-Grips will act as your helper and save a lot of awkward situations! The key to a successful build is to BE PATIENT and think carefully about each step before you do it, and I think you will be surprised how well the whole Skyfort comes together.

We opted for the cheaper version by picking this up in the store. We had read all of the reviewes and pre-read the instructions before even buying it. Took about 4.5 hours to lay out all the boards for inventory. At night I would build later sections such as Monkey bars, ladder, and rock wall in the garage. This made construction go much faster. After the sorting was all done it took me about 28 hours to build it myself. I recommend you put down four to six cement pavers for the main structure and pre-level them all to each other. That as well as leveling all the boards as you go through will prevent you from having boards that don't line up well down the road. Always pay attention to the pictures. Look at the positioning of piece S2 to realize how S1 boards need to be installed as the instructions do not cover that. Also I recommend not building the small roof and trying to install it as a whole. You may also want to get an attachment for your drill to attach socket wrench bits to it to make putting all of the lag screws in go much faster. I did that half way through and it made a huge difference in time. As for the play set its sturdy and holds up well. My daughter loves it and we have spent more time outside now that its built then ever before.

I chose this swing + set because of many reasons but some of the most important to me were the reviews from others that were very helpful, price/without added shipping, many extras that a 7-8 year old wants and just that I loved the look with the bay windows and lookout tower. Do sort the pieces and bag the hardware for each step. I had all the pieces with ours and it took two days 8 hours each to put together.

Very nice set. Looked for a long time before buying this one. Not hard to assemble, but is very time consuming. Parts are clearly marked. Diagrams are the problem. They use shading to show if boards are attached inside or outside of their rails. Have had to remove and re-install several boards, but overall the directions are easy to follow. Very solid feel to the structure. Has taken 3 adults 15 hours to complete. PS, the slide is pretty fast, watch very little kids so they don't bounce right off the end.

Love this playset! We bought this for our 2 year old daughter. She outgrew her toddler set and we figured this set would last her until she was 9 or 10. She absolutely loves it! She plays on it for hours everyday. Loves the rockwall and the look-out tower (she likes to pretend she is Rapunzel). Obviously she is too small for the monkey bars but she hangs off them with daddy holding her. I would not hesitate to recommend this set. It is high quality and well made. We compared this to a set at a big box hardware store, and this set was much nicer and better made at a much lower price. A couple small comments... one, some, not all, of the hardware is cheaply made (screws stripped etc). For a nice set, the hardware should be better. Second, the pieces all come in different boxes with no rhyme or reason. My suggestion is to take an hour and separate the wood by letter and number. You will save hours searching for pieces. I did this for my husband and he was so happy. Believe the 24-48 hour time estimate for assembly. My husband and son built this in about 30 man hours. Overall a great purchase!